Present day terminal equipment such as telephones have visible indicators mounted on the surface of the telephone. These visible indicators indicate, for example, that particular telephone keypads or functions are being used. In many telephones, light emitting diodes (LEDs) are used as sources of light for the visible indicators. In this case, light output from an LED is controlled by the telephone electronics and the light output from the LED is transmitted to a visible indicator mounted at the surface of the telephone.
In the prior art, LEDs are mounted relatively close to the surface of the telephone so that light output from an LED only has to travel a short distance through a conductor, for example, a lightpipe, to reach the surface of the telephone. Newer technology used to fabricate telephones sometimes requires mounting LEDs further from the surface of the telephone than was previously the case in the prior art. Further, many newer telephones have a surface which is slanted or rounded. Since the LEDs are typically mounted on a single board, typically they all lie in the same plane. As a result, the distance between an LED and the surface of the telephone is different for different LED-indicator pairs. Despite this difference in distance between an LED and an indicator for different LED-indicator pairs, there is a need for light output from each indicator to have substantially the same intensity when light applied to an input end of each of the lightpipes has substantially the same intensity.